Tribune Opinion: Dear Gessler, voter fraud isn’t an issue

Did the Colorado Secretary of State really believe the nearly 4,000 voters he sent a letter to questioning their voting status had registered illegally, or was he simply trying to intimidate those people from not casting a ballot?

Critics have asserted the latter, and frankly, we think some of the evidence warrants a questioning of Gessler’s motives.

Gessler identified the 4,000 voters by looking at motor vehicle records. All the targeted residents used non-U.S. citizen identification to get their driver’s license.

The letters he sent to these registered voters asked them to fill out a detailed form to prove they are U.S. citizens.

Nearly all the voters who received the letters were either registered Democrats or unaffiliated. Of the 4,000 letters sent, 486 went to registered Republicans.

Only after he had already sent the letters did Gessler gain access to a federal database that allowed him to check citizenship. After running 1,416 of the names through the database, 177 came back requiring further checks. None were confirmed as non-citizens.

So far, 16 people have voluntarily withdrawn their voter registration.

We don’t quite understand why Gessler didn’t simply run the names collected from motor vehicle records through the database before he sent out the personal letters. We imagine some receiving an official letter from a state office questioning their legal status as a voter could be intimidating.

In a year when Colorado could be critical to the outcome of the presidential election, it seems suspicious that Gessler would pick now to aggressively pursue potential voter fraud. Other than his personal suspicions, we haven’t heard that there was any evidence to lead to an extensive investigation.

If anything, this exercise by Gessler should prove to Colorado residents that our voter registration system is working, and that fraud is minimal, if it exists at all.

We think Colorado residents would like to know how much money our secretary of state has spent on this hunt for the illusive illegal voter, including the time he and his staff spent researching those targeted. It seems like a great amount of effort for virtually no gain.

We certainly hope Gessler and his office work as diligently on ensuring a fair and accurate election as they have on this search for ineligible voters. And we hope our secretary of state might finally feel confident enough in our voter registration system to finally leave this issue alone.